Paul Ryan justifies himself to the wingnuts

Paul Ryan last week took heat from rightwingers for his votes on TARP, the auto bailout and taxing AIG bonuses. Paul Ryan now justifies these votes to the wingnuts. He regrets the vote on bonuses (the vote seemed populist then, looks like big gummint now). He also says TARP was necessary because only massive goverment intervention could keep alive his Randian free market ideals. Seriously:

I believe we were on the cusp of a deflationary spiral which would have created a Depression. I think that’s probably pretty likely. If we would have allowed that to happen, I think we would have had a big government agenda sweeping through this country so fast that we wouldn’t have recovered from it. So in order to prevent a Depression and a complete evisceration of the free market system we have, I think it was necessary. It wasn’t a fun vote. You don’t get to choose the kind of votes you want. But I just think as far as the long term objectives that I have — which are restoring the principles of this country — I think it was necessary to prevent those principles from being really kind of wiped out for a generation.

Strangely, he was not questioned about his votes for the Bush budgets and for the Medicare prescription drug benefit.